


the stories we tell ourselves

by toastforone



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Big Brother Dean, Gen, High School, Mom Dean Winchester, Smoker Dean Winchester, Teen Dean Winchester, Teen Sam Winchester, Teen Winchesters, john winchester is a bad father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 08:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29487075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastforone/pseuds/toastforone
Summary: To sixteen-year-old Dean these parenting choices sent a clear message. You may take pleasure but only in ways that harm. You may find peace, an unadorned moment of quiet, but this selfishness must rot you to the core.John Winchester was a shitty father and Dean finds himself with days free
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester, Dean Winchester & John Winchester & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, John Winchester & Mary Winchester, John Winchester & Sam Winchester
Kudos: 15





	the stories we tell ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> John Winchester was a shitty father and it only in heaven to get beat up by mary for fucking her kids up xx

It wasn’t the world that changed after Mary’s death, shifting to reveal darkness previously hidden, pushing John into a crusade to gut the evil underbelly of backroad America. Rather it was John that did the changing. Picking up the pieces of life that had fallen around him and reassembling them into something that made sense, something he could fathom. At the centre was his wife. Beautiful, innocent, maternal Mary. As the flames licked the foundations of their home, they too burnt through the realities of their marriage. Through John’s late-night escapades fuelled by beer and a need to conquer; back room poker games, route 59, the neighbor’s wife. It honed his blind rage into targeted fury. Pure Mary’s death gave him a purpose not felt since his time in Vietnam, this quest for revenge filling all the gaps in himself he had felt so keenly in the suburbs. But of course, on this mission he needed comrades, brothers in arms. 

At four years old Dean was already a man in his father’s eyes. A good soldier to keep rank amongst potential deserters. As Dean grew up, out of his awkward youth into a sturdier adolescence, John never denied him a cold one after a late night’s hunt, an obvious blind eye to the Pall Malls Dean would sneak from his pack, or the bloodied knuckles he would return home with. The alcohol, nicotine, and violence all props in this charade of hardened masculinity. John never consciously formed the thought but took comfort that as the years blurred together so too would these props and his eldest boy until the result was no longer a charade but a man ready to face an unclean world and the responsibilities he would have to bear. 

At sixteen years old Dean took a different view of his father’s actions. The seeming obliviousness, or rather indifference, towards his own clumsy escapades felt meaner, more sadistic. Take the local girls Dean fucked then left behind. Sneaking out of their decidedly middle-class bedrooms to walk across town under the dark sky to whatever shitty motel John had found in the phone book to set up camp Dean was not only walking away from these girls and their fragile self-esteem but from fragments of Dean himself. His softness, his innocence, and his reckless want for more lay scattered around the country as he became more practiced at how to talk to girls, more unfeeling of how it all ended. Sam’s intuitive understanding not to rat him out to John for slipping out of their shared room to the motel parking lot for a smoke when he was on babysitting duty wounded Dean in a quiet way. Little Sammy already knew that John either wouldn’t waste his energy chastising Dean or was in fact facilitating this endeavour. The butt of each cigarette an overdue pay slip for his time as cook, cleaner, teacher, mother. Each drag he took was a penitent act, a curated rebellion existing within the sharp confines of his father’s carefully crafted love. 

To sixteen-year-old Dean these parenting choices sent a clear message. You may take pleasure but only in ways that harm. You may find peace, an unadorned moment of quiet, but this selfishness must rot you to the core. 

At seventeen Dean was loaded with the confidence to hustle his own pool games, and the fake IDs to do with his winnings as he pleased. It had been a hard few months on the road, bouncing from meaningless hunt to hunt when John decided to find a more stable base for their unit, in so far as John understood the word stable. The boys were of the age John deemed old enough to handle themselves should he pick up the scent of Mary’s killer in the wind and bail for a while to research or unburden himself of fatherhood. Sam was soon enrolled in the local high school to keep him busy during the days and ensure he received at least enough actual education to keep him upright. Dean had never officially dropped out, but he assumed the government had bigger fish to fry than another disenfranchised youth lost in the system. His history of boy’s home and petty theft didn’t inspire a strong enthusiasm from the local officials to track him down and ensure he had access to geography or advanced algebra. He understood his lot in life and assumed they did the same. 

John’s inevitable need to leave them came before long. With a halfhearted explanation of where he was going and how long for Dean watched from the motel doorway as John threw his bag in the passenger seat. Pausing by the driver’s side door John looked back at his son.

“You’ve got Bobby’s number”. Dean gave a curt nod in reply, which John mirrored back to him before getting in and revving the engine. It was pointed, and Dean received the message loud and clear. They were to call Bobby if they needed help with any of the mundane problems that sometimes arose when they were in one spot too long, like teachers trying to get in touch, hassle from motel staff over late bills, or that time little Sammy burnt his hand trying to serve up his dinner without taking it out of the oven. Dean knew better than to ask if Bobby had been informed of John’s trip. As he got older Dean sensed Bobby was always on guard, poised by the phone should they need. It was noon on a Wednesday and Sam was at school, missing any goodbye from his father. Dean was here with John but didn’t feel any luckier. It was barely a goodbye. If Dean was lying to himself, he could pretend that John preferred just slipping off, that any emotional feely bullshit would only hurt too much, weigh on them all as a reminder of the stakes. Each hunt could be his last, and if Dean wasn’t lying to himself, he sometimes wished it would be. 

Dean quickly found casual work at a local warehouse. It was simple job, unloading boxes off the back of trucks to the right shelves, and loading up the next lot of goods. The other guys were alright and there were a few other workers who looked to be around Dean’s age. They kept to themselves, working quietly and efficiently, but not too efficiently as to be sent home early without another hours pay. Dean liked the evenings after a shift. He found sleep more easily, his muscles heavy and tight from use during the day. They only needed him a few afternoons a week and this left him with plenty of time to spare, and not much to do. The warehouse was only a short walk from Sam’s school. This gave Dean peace of mind. He liked knowing Sam was close, as if there was an invisible cord between the pair tying them together, which Dean could tug on, pulling Sam out of harm’s way at a moment’s notice.

The Friday after John’s departure the warehouse had called Dean in for an early shift and he found himself with a couple of hours to spare before Sam got out of class. Dean had taken to meeting Sam by the gate when he could. He loved their walk home, Sam’s earnestness spilling out of him as he babbled about the events of the day. Sam liked school in a way that Dean never had, loved the minutia of the routine and being surrounded by people, their normal lives bubbling over for Sam to soak up. He spoke quickly the whole way home, as if he didn’t tell Dean straight away the memory would fade in his mind and cease to be. On Dean’s part he liked to see his brother so energized, refuelled by the activity and attention of those whose job it was to care about him. The information he gathered from Sam also aided in fleshing out his idea of the town, and more specifically the school. Call it practice for surveillance when he inevitably joined John on hunts, Dean liked to case the place out, get to know where Sam’s classes were. It came in handy if John needed to ditch the town quickly. You also could never be too sure these schools weren’t haunted by the spirits of underpaid teachers to the runt of the class no one looked out for. 

As he was reaching the end of his scoping, he followed a path around the back of the school, to where it ended past the field. The field was surrounded by chain link fence, and the end furthest from the school backed on to the car yards and warehouses which made up most of the town’s industry. The fence here was mostly covered by weeds, vines and what looked to be once cared for shrubs. Perhaps a previous groundskeeper didn’t want the students looking out to what faced the majority of them in the future. Dean poked his head around, past the fence to see a grass knoll rising about the height of the fence itself. Dean continued his walk, looking to see if there were any buildings or exits, he needed to add to the mental map he had forming in his head. Through a small gap in the fence where the vines didn’t reach Dean could see students walking out to the field. At the back of the group Dean could make out Sammy. Not having anywhere else he needed to be Dean stood still in his tracks, and observed as they set up bases, taking instruction from a teacher. He could hear the rustling of the leaves and, if the wind blew the right way, the teacher yelling out scores or encouragement. He lit up a cigarette and stood, now emersed in watching Sam play, having to stop himself from cheering out when Sam got to second base on his first bat. His love for his brother radiated through him and even though Dean knew he was out of sight from the gym class, he yearned for his love to radiate far enough Sam could feel it. As the boys got older the window for Sam to have a normal childhood, have a team sport on Saturdays, and see John cheer him on at prize giving, was closing. Dean didn’t want that for himself particularly, he was too old now, and the thought of John mingling with other parents would only serve to highlight the contrast between their family and others. Dean knew this was another way the brothers differed. 

Sam told him about the game on their walk home that afternoon. Apparently, his gym teacher loved baseball and lived by the belief that if his students just did the same thing enough, they had to eventually get good at it. Dean was more cynical than Sam and thought the teacher probably just couldn’t find the energy to gather any other equipment or teach this group of uncoordinated thirteen-year old’s another sport. He kept his day’s activities to himself. Didn’t want Sam to think Dean was coddling him or make this town special. Dean knew Sam couldn’t afford to do that, given they would probably be leaving before Sam had a chance to get sick of baseball. 

Without trying, Dean had absorbed Sam’s routine, knew when he would be out on the field and found himself gravitating to his now normal spot over the fence. He would arrive earlier than he needed to and remained there occasionally long after Sam’s lesson had finished. Dean enjoyed the fresh air he was normally too preoccupied to notice and liked stumbling his way towards a routine of his own; walk, sit, watch, smoke, breathe. When buying his own smokes Dean liked menthols, liked the minty taste they left in his mouth. In an off-kilter way, he thought of it as cleansing, breathing all the bad shit out with the smoke and leaving only the good behind. He kept this to himself. It was one of John’s unspoken laws that menthols were for pussies or girls, the same way craving fresh fruit, or wanting to sleep in an actual bed each night was. Without looking at the goal too directly, Dean was trying cut down his smoking during the day, slowly building up to reserving it for this period of still as he held his post by the field. He had grown uncomfortable at the thought of Sam witnessing him in such an action though, Sam could surely smell it on his clothes and breath. 

Sometimes there was a girl behind the fence too. She didn’t sit near Dean up high on the grass, but down by the base of the fence, as if instead of trying to view the field she was working to be hidden, blending in with the greenery. At first Dean was worried he had been sprung, and would be punished for loitering on school ground, but his worries were put to bed when the grungy looking girl sparked up and the earthy smell of pot reached him. Sometimes she’d be reading. Other times she’d just sit, as quietly alone as Dean, whilst she smoked. 

A couple of weeks passed before the girl first approached him, somehow coming closer towards him than she ever had before Dean had noticed her moving. 

“Hey, you got a light?” She stood to his right, not blocking Dean’s view. He turned his head, but not all the way, as if cocking his ear to hear someone call out from the next room.

“Yeah sure”, he groped around in his pockets, quickly finding his pack and the lighter that lived in it. Passing the lighter over she took it, moving to sit down not quite next to him but a step over, leaving enough room for someone to comfortably sit between them. The patch of grass reminded him of something Sam had jokingly told him on one of their walks home, repeating a warning from his home room teacher that any funny business at the upcoming school dance wouldn’t be tolerated, and that all couples should “save room for Jesus”. Sam passed this off as a joke, a lame rule from his antique of a teacher who didn’t seem to understand she didn’t have to worry about the kids who bothered to turn up to home room and that those who didn’t wouldn’t care anyway. Dean saw through this though, saw the way Sam was carefully fishing for certainty around how long they would be staying, hoping if he cast his net wide enough, he might finally come up with more than a whole lot of nothing. Dean had joined in the laughter, offering up the mental image that 'oh yeah because Jesus grinding up on your date would be any better'. Dean wondered if Sam saw through him in the same way. If he saw even deeper than that, to the part of Dean that wanted to promise they would still be here for the dance, wanted to offer him today’s wages to buy the tickets, and more importantly to the part of him that ached because he couldn’t. 

“So, what’s the deal? You like baseball but the major league’s too major? Watching freshmen try not to strike out’s more your speed?” She deadpanned. Dean didn’t meet her eye contact.

“Something like that” He replied, trying to appear nonchalant, sure of himself, but realising perhaps she required a more substantial answer. He was, after all, spending his time effectively spying on a high school gym class. He felt off balance now she was striking up conversation. This was uncharted water for him. They had spent so much time passively in each other’s orbits he felt vulnerable at the realisation she had borne witness to his unguarded repose, as if she had somehow looked through him and seen his most tender insides, his love for Sam. Something else muddying the waters was that he hadn’t needed to explain himself to anyone for a while now. Most people drew their own conclusions. How do you tell a stranger you’re keeping guard over your little brother from god knows what during a pause in your transient life? Something about her spoke to Dean’s more trusting instincts. Maybe it was the way her tatty knit cardigan swamped her the hem of her checkered dressed barely visible above her bruised knees, calling attention to her youth, or just the fact that she also had nowhere better to be than quietly smoking by the field. She hadn’t tried to attack him yet.

“See that kid fielding out past second base? The little shrimpy looking one? That’s my brother” Dean settled for hopefully clearing up that he was not in fact some weirdo without offering anything more concrete, more damning. 

“Cool” She nodded, apparently this was all she needed. They sat in a comfortable silence, now both watching the game, tracking Sammy as he ran after each ball with everything he had. Soon the lesson was over and they both rose. Dean off to meet Sam, and the girl to wherever she was going. Dean hadn’t given much thought to her existence away from the field. He wondered if she thought about him. 

The next time they both found themselves on the grassy knoll it was a brighter day. The warmth of the sun couldn’t seem to reach them but cast a crisp light overhead. She lit up and he could smell the now familiar scent of her pot wafting over. They watched as Sam stepped up to bat. Her loud coughing drew Dean’s attention away. 

“Hey man, you want some of this? I get the feeling it would not be the best idea for me to finish it all” She had already began walking over to sit next to Dean before he had nodded his agreement. He historically had turned down any offer of mind-altering substances. The horror stories of a bad trip tended to hit different when you’d seen the amount of weird shit Dean had. His imagination needed no help in conjuring the stuff of nightmares and, after a lifetime of John, he lived in a constant level of paranoia. But John wasn’t here. He was here, sitting in the sun, with an eye on his little brother and free drugs from a friendly girl. 

He took the blunt from her and tried to look natural as he inhaled. He could taste she had cut it with tobacco and enjoyed the heaviness of the smoke in his mouth before exhaling.

“Woah dude, you’re letting go too soon. You’ve gotta let all that good shit sit in your lungs, really soak up in there”. There was no bite to her advice, and he took another drag. This time he inhaled deeper, imagining the smoke sinking down inside him like dye in water.

“Dean” He exhaled.

“What?”

“I’m Dean” He said never taking his eyes of Sam.

“Oh, Rachel” She replied, proffering her hand for the joint back. They passed it between them until only the filter remained. Dean felt a heaviness in his body, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was as if he could feel all those little parts of him he had left scattered from state to state fly back to him. All their lightness joining together and accumulating in his body, weighing him down. He felt grounded, tethered to the grass in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. If he thought back honestly enough perhaps not since he had laid in his mother’s arms. He watched Sam reach up to high five another kid on the field and let himself bask in the moment. 

The next week Rachel didn’t ask before coming over to sit with Dean. Plonking herself onto the ground to his right she pulled her purple lighter from deep within her. She lit up and reached over, offering it to him. He thought vaguely that if she kept this up, he had money from his warehouse job he could give her. Recompense for this steady companionship. They paid in cash, which he had kept stashed in various spots around their motel room in case someone broke in, or he got jumped, or they had to leave in a hurry. He didn’t like the thought of it all in one place, the idea of all of it being lost at once was unbearable. Somehow though, he sensed money wasn’t what she was expecting or particularly wanted from him. He got the sense there wasn’t anything she particularly wanted from him. 

“So what class are you skipping? I don’t see you round school” She questioned, lightly, as if Dean were a stray cat that might startle at a sudden movement. 

“Oh, you’re a student here?” Dean felt a fog lower down over his head and hearing his voice as he spoke sounded at once too slow and far faster than he had anticipated. He didn’t feel the need to showboat for this girl but couldn’t bear the thought of being branded a light weight. 

“Yeah, you’re not?” Her voice sounded normal, but he had to concentrate on what she was saying, catch the words as they threatened to float into the fog before being comprehended. 

“No, I uh, I’m just here for the kid” My kid, echoed in the air and he hoped he hadn’t said it out load. “Why, what are you skipping?” he turned the conversation back on her, turning as well to look at her properly for the first time. Her hair was black and curly, falling heavy around her face. She wore a black choker around her neck that was trimmed with small translucent red beads. The beads were drop shaped and reminded Dean in a far-off way of a stain glass window he had seen once with Sam and John. There was a pastor John had needed to visit, and he gave the boys a tour of the church, the centre piece of which was a grand stained-glass window of the weeping Mary. Instead of tears she was weeping blood, perfect little crimson drops. It kind of freaked Dean out but John made them pause and look. Apparently, Mary, their mother not the virgin, had liked stained glass, joking that when she was rich she would find a way to have one in her house. In truth it no longer mattered what John told the boys Mary had or hadn’t liked. All the years following her death had eroded her away, leaving Mary as dimensional as the windowpanes themselves. Only Sam really paid attention anymore, clinging onto to the scraps of information John threw at their feet him like a toddler grasping at a faceless woman’s skirt. 

“Uh officially I’m not skipping.” There was a smugness to her voice. “I have an… understanding with my U.S. History teacher over his misunderstanding of U.S. history.” A smile crept across Dean’s face. “Basically, he didn’t like being faced with the reality that we still profit off slavery, the land we stand on is stolen, and that Christopher Columbous in no way discovered America while trying to teach us that both sides of the civil war were noble. Apparently, my presence was disruptive to the other students. It’s easier for him to just mark me present than have to sit through more conflict resolution sessions with me. Like, okay dude, tell yourself whatever stories you need to hear so you can sleep at night but just because you’ve grown up hearing the stories doesn’t make them true. Doesn’t mean I have to accept them” Her voice faltered slightly, as if this was the first time she had gotten this far without meeting resistance.

“Sometimes I fucking hate it here, but I guess I can’t be too mad they agree that I don’t need to be in that class or… religious education” She shuddered. 

“What so instead you just come out here and get high?”

“I’m living the American dream Dean” she said with a chuckle, blowing smoke straight up to the sky.

After that conversation Rachel stopped sitting at the base of the fence, choosing to join Dean where they could watch the field. Dean began to think of it as their post more than his alone. He liked Rachel’s company. She reminded him of Sam, the way she could somehow sense when to fill the silence, chattering away about whatever popped into her head. Unlike Sam her stream of consciousness often revolved around the inherent injustices of various societal norms, and not what funny thing some kid in his maths class had said that day. She also knew when her presence alone was solid enough to anchor the moment. Some days they wouldn’t talk at all, reverting back to the stasis of their first few encounters. Chain smoking for the sake of it, a small pile of cigarette butts would form their own miniature knoll at Dean’s side. In an odd way he liked that, the pile serving as definitive proof of his time passing, proof that he himself was there. The elements worked to disperse them between his visits, scattering ash into the wind. As his absences from the field lessened, his creeping suspicion grew that after he was gone Rachel would collect them to dispose of more responsibly, the toxic remnants of his habit weighing deeply on her conscious. 

As the weeks rolled into each other like waves on the horizon Dean realised it was the longest John had left them alone. He had manoeuvred his way around any situation which would result in having to call Bobby, as if the act of dialling his number would break the spell and shatter the veil behind which they played house. 

It was another Tuesday, but Sam wasn’t on the field. His class was in the gym, spending the week before the formal with a dance teacher to master the basics. As they got closer to the night of the dance Sam had stopped talking about, as if in his own way avoiding jinxing it. There was no longer an explainable reason for Dean to be by the field anymore yet there he was with Rachel.

“I’ll tell you what my friend this is some primo shit today, I may or may not have sampled the goods last night and you are in for a treat” She brought her left arm up, bent at the elbow. Her now signature black knit sweater acting as a curtain behind which her other arm hid. She cocked an eyebrow at him before dramatically revealing her right hand, rolling it like a half rate kid’s magician to produce the fattest blunt Dean had seen thus far served up on her palm. They fell into their regular routine, passing it back and forth while Rachel made comments Dean could only half follow. He listened to the cadence of her voice, and the sincerity with which she offered up confessions such as; 

“I feel like I have to say I don’t like Sylvia Plath because she’s the only example of a female poet these fuckwits seem to know and perhaps, she was a tad racist but her stuff… it’s haunting really”. 

“Well, when I meet her ghost, I’ll tell her that Rachel secretly likes your work, but you should cut down on the racism”. Dean closed his eyes, now watching a movie trailer projected onto his eyelids in which their family mission was to hunt down the ghost of Sylvia Plath and not his mother. Rachel was also absorbed in thought but somehow Dean doubted it was the same one. 

“I deserve a treat, it’s my birthday today” He turned to look at her and burst into laughter. His head felt twice its size and his feet felt miles away. He didn’t know why he had said that. It was a lie. His birthday wasn’t for months, yet it felt right in his baked brain. He deserved a treat. Today he deserved a treat. Rachel’s laugh joined his as she tilted her head back. Her smile was wide and toothy, sending peals of laughter pelting upwards towards the sky like rain in reverse. She jumped to her feet and toppled to the top of the knoll, yelling 

“It’s Dean’s birthday!”. In some corner of his brain, he knew that now she would be visible to everyone on the field and the classrooms past it, but the sight of her shouting to the world was ridiculously brilliant enough it didn’t seem to matter. Her enthusiasm to celebrate his fake birthday buoyed him. She was hooting now, “It’s Dean’s fucking birthday!” and began to sing happy birthday at the top of her lungs while holding her hand out to conduct to an imaginary orchestra.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice buzzed in his ears. Oh shit, Dean had never been so high to hear Sam in his head before. “Dean, I’ve been looking for you”. Sam stood on the path by the base of the fence. Rachels singing cut off. It was so weird for Dean to see Sam there, like his presence made the spot real and not just some part of Dean’s imagination. Sam’s face was pinched, his shoulders tight. If this were truly Dean’s imagination this would not be the Sam he chose. 

“It’s Dad. He’s waiting in the car; we’re heading off tonight” The weed induced heaviness Dean had once found comforting now suffocated him. He could feel the hurt in his brother’s voice, his words clipped and angry. Sam’s face sobered Dean. He tried to think of something to say, tried to will his sorry at Sam’s hurt to manifest itself in a visual way Dean could offer Sam, give his little brother some solace, a reason it would all be okay. Rachel was right, this was some good shit. The weed had slowed him down, made his head too muggy to react appropriately. 

“Dean, now. Pull yourself together for fucks sake we have to go pack”. Dean saw in his brother’s expression himself reflected back to him. His face blank and impassive. Dean couldn’t admit to Sam their life was shit. Their father was no father and that all this wasn’t going to change anytime soon. But in Dean’s silence Sam read detachment and disinterest. The same callous version of truth John subscribed to. You may have pleasure, but it must hurt you. It wasn’t fair. With Dean four sheets to the wind, why should Sam have to bear it alone. The cruelty of being constantly offered something he knew to be a falsehood, something he knew he could not keep. 

Without looking back at Rachel Dean got up to follow his brother. 

Dean would have expected the pack up to take longer, given the complacency the boys had fallen into, the expectation that there would be a tomorrow here. It didn’t though, and as unceremoniously as they had arrived, their meagre possessions were chucked haphazardly into bags, bunched up and needing a wash. All they really had was a few outfits, all Dean’s originally, finding their way into Sam’s pile when Dean was done with them. Sam owned a couple of notebooks he turned to a fresh page whenever he had to join a new class and jump into yet another curriculum. Collectively they had, hopefully, all the weapons you’d need to kill anything that might come their way. As they packed Dean retrieved his cash from the various places it had been stashed around the room. Without speaking he made his way over to where his father stood by the door, pressed the wad into John’s open palm and moved to put their shit in the car. Sam appeared to fall asleep in the back seat as soon as John had pulled out of the motel parking lot. Dean could tell by his breathing it was not a true state of sleep. Sam would often feign unconsciousness on long car rides, or short car rides, or just whenever he didn’t want anyone to expect anything from him. Dean couldn’t blame him. Sometimes it was nicer to just be still, eyes closed, rather than face their father. If John could tell the difference he didn’t care, Sam heard the majority of the crap John deemed him too young to know. With the façade of his sleep John gave himself permission to let the flood gates open, pouring his trauma into Dean under the guise of hunting reports, or new lore learned the moment before it was too late. This was a duty Dean accepted willingly. If Sam wanted to pretend to sleep, Dean wouldn’t let him down this time. 

“Tracked down some shifter bitch, it was a nasty chase over a few state lines to get her. She didn’t go down easy, but she gave it up when I did get her. Interesting stuff. Not as much as I’d have liked but enough to make it worth our while. We’re getting closer son; I can practically taste it”. 

“Yes Sir”. He replied, keeping it brief as they pulled up to a red light. Dean looked over to see an arm lounging out the window of the car next to them at the intersection, a dart lounging between his fingers. He watched the smoke drift up, dissipating into the air, Rachel’s words echoing in his bones. 

Just because you’ve grown up hearing the stories doesn’t make them true. 

John stepped on the gas.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is reading this and wants to make a dean winchester edit set to the Mindless Self Indulgence song Witness I will be forever grateful


End file.
